"The Tell" Author Amy Griffin FIRES BACK Against Claims of Stolen Memories and SUES Jane Doe

Author Amy Griffin is now suing the woman who alleges Amy stole her story for her bestseller The Tell. You remember this book where she claimed she had recovered memories of growing up in Amarillo, Texas? Nobody knows who Amy Griffin is, but she's married to a very rich $6 billion man in New York, and she's used her husband's money to invest in various female empowerment-type companies like Gwyneth Paltrow and people like that, who then all promoted her book. So it became a bestseller, and then she made The Time 100 as this terribly put-upon Me Too victim. I feel sorry for me. I don't. Enjoy your $6 billion. And it turns out that, according to The New York Times, she may have stolen the story from a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who she grew up with in Amarillo, Texas, that these weren't Amy's recovered memories. These were her classmates' memories. And it tracks because Amy was from a very well-to-do family. She was very popular. She was the head cheerleader or what have you. And that's not generally the one that the inappropriate, gross math teacher chooses to abuse. Sadly, they usually choose girls from broken families. It can be boys too, especially when it comes to childhood sexual abuse. Broken families who can't threaten them as much or who can be demeaned or diminished or don't have means and so on. In any event, it doesn't mean it can't happen to a well-off girl, but there were holes in the story from the start. And then The New York Times found this woman who went to school with Amy who says she stole my story. And not only that, but then that woman filed a lawsuit against Amy Griffin saying, not only did you steal my story, you came out here, you met with me shortly before the publication of your book, and you got me to send you a postcard. I was like, so good to be back in touch. And then you clearly co-opted that story for your book saying this other girl, Claudia, who you went to school with, who also got allegedly raped by the man you're claiming raped you, sent you a postcard out of the blue. And it seemed to you to be telegraphing that like me too, after your memoir was published. And so this woman's like, you're a fraud. You stole my story. You asked me to have coffee. You gave me a postcard or asked me to buy one and then wrote out your address for me to send it to you. And then you wrote about it in the book. There's this other person named Claudia who was also raped, but that's not the truth. Only I was, as far as I know, so just says this woman, not exactly, but like that. And you did it all to self aggrandize so that you could wind up on Gwyneth Paltrow's show and Oprah's show and and wind up at the Time 100. Well, now she, Griffin, is cross-counter suing that woman. And it's turned into a true she said, she said, where one of them is absolutely lying, 100%. One of them is making up a bunch of stuff, and we just don't know who. So it's a very interesting case. That's where we're gonna kick it off. We got three pals here today on Kelly's Court, Mark Iglarz, co-host of Positively Legal on MK True Crime, which you should subscribe to at your podcast service or on YouTube.com. Andrew Branca, who's host of the Andrew Branca Show, and Dave Ehrenberg, who's co-host of the MK True Crime Show, who you can also find on Substack now cuz Dave's finally sharing his legal gifts with us in multiple forums now that he's no longer a county attorney for Palm Beach. Great to see you all. Okay, so am I right, Mark? They can't both be telling the truth in this particular circumstance. It's either Amy Griffin or Jane Doe, as she refers to herself in the lawsuit. One of them is making up a bunch of whoppers. Right, this is one or the other. One is a horrible person, and I'm hoping through the lawsuit, we're going to find out who it is. I'm so desperate to know, and I can't just sit and wait, so I'm investigating. I watched an interview of the attorney who filed the lawsuit trying to gaze what kind of person, what's he about? Is he an ambulance- The one representing Jane Doe? Yeah, is he an ambulance chaser? Is he just in for the money? No, man, the guy seemed legit. So he's willing to bankroll this lawsuit based upon the evidence that he has uncovered. That put a little plus in the column over there. I don't know, Megan, but this is pretty bad. I'm not ready to call her a snake yet. You seem to be leaning towards she stole the story, but we really don't know. We don't know yet. We don't know. We don't know. We don't make that clear. I don't wanna throw Amy Griffin under the bus. I actually know Amy a little. She's always very nice to me. It's just, if she did this, she's a horrible person. We all agree there. That's very clear. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but we just don't know because now, well, we didn't know at any point, but now this woman's come forward saying she is a horrible person. She did steal, and what Amy's saying in response, Dave, is that she never went out there and met with this. So she's like, I never went to Palm Springs at all, which I guess is where the woman claims the meeting took place, and she's been able to produce no receipts to show otherwise because they asked her for documents, and she said, I don't have any responsive documents. So she's kinda saying put up or shut up, but I mean, either the woman is totally fabricating that Amy Griffin flew out there and they met together and they did this postcard thing, or Amy is completely lying when she says she never met with this woman with whom she did meet. Yep, Megan, it's a binary choice here. One of them is lying, and you can prove it just show the receipts, right? I mean, Amy Griffin is saying in her lawsuit that she has documented proof that she wrote out her account in 2020, and then she gave a formal interview with the Amarillo Police Department in 2021, and that's before the Jane Doe came out with her account in 2022, and so- No, it's before Amy allegedly went and met with Jane Doe. Right, correct. So that timeline really does in order to the benefit of Amy Griffin, right? If she in fact wrote out her own story and gave a police report in 2021 before she ever met with the Jane Doe, then that should be game over, right? It doesn't though. No, it shouldn't. I understand why you think that, but it shouldn't because the allegation by Jane Doe is that Amy knew all about Jane's sexual assault from when they were children, that she told Amy that she borrowed Amy's dress to go to this cotillion and then gave it back to Amy after she, Jane Doe, had been sexually assaulted by the teacher, and it had bodily fluids on it. And so she believes, I can't remember if the allegation is that she directly told Amy about it or that the dress made it clear and that there were others in the community who knew, and she's presuming Amy understood all of this long before. Otherwise, why would Amy have known to call her? Why would Amy have asked to meet with her? And then she also alleges Amy then, so in other words, she's claiming Amy wrote down that story before she met with Jane Doe because Amy knew it from her childhood. She'd been told the story, and that she just rounded back to Jane Doe to firm up the story, maybe add a couple of details, and possibly just to strong arm Jane Doe into giving her this postcard so that she could use it in the actual memoir. But isn't the 2019 coffee shop meeting really important here, right, in Palm Springs? Griffin says that she has documentation. She wasn't even in the area at the time. So, I mean, all these holes- That's bizarre. Yeah, that's a problem. Yes, I agree. That one threw me for a loop, too, as somebody who has been critical of Griffin on this. If she wasn't there, whatever, people can get dates wrong, it's possible. But if she never flew out and met with this woman, then the woman's a fabulist. Jane Doe's not telling the truth, which is a possibility. Yeah, and she did a tactical move, Megan, because Jane Doe, she was able to get anonymity by filing the privacy lawsuit in California. So what Amy Griffin did smartly was to file in Nevada a defamation lawsuit which outs her, which actually produces her name. It's just not being named in the press. So this is a pressure campaign also to say, okay, you're not gonna be able to hide behind anonymity much longer. Yes. Well, here's the other thing, though, Andrew. They're not suing the New York Times, Amy Griffin, right, as far as, they're not sued. But they're the ones who broke the story of Jane Doe. Maureen Callahan, actually, in the MK Media Network first came out about the tell saying, I smell a rat. She had read the Amazon reviews where woman after woman was saying kind of what I said at the top, which is there's some deviant math teacher who's raping young teens in an Amarillo school. No one ever heard a whiff about it. And he chooses the most popular girl in school, the prom queen, rich girl. That does not track. That's not a thing. So Maureen did a segment on it. Then the New York Times did a deep dive in which they produced Jane Doe. They didn't cite her, but they found this whole new element to the story, which is whoa, whoa, whoa, Amy's recovered memories are actual memories from this other girl. But it wasn't the teacher that Amy Griffin is accusing. It was a different teacher who then left the school. And the New York Times, Andrew, is standing by its reporting 100% saying it all checks out. We don't move one inch off of our reporting. Well, the problem is, in the law, the truth is always kind of ephemeral, right? I mean, for example, juries never really know what happened. We try to get the closest approximation of the truth that we can. And the trouble with these cases is that they all happened decades ago. Statutes of limitation exist for a reason. And we see a repeated cycle of this. We see E. Jean Carroll accusing Trump over things that happened two, three decades ago. We saw Christine Blasey Ford accusing Brett Kavanaugh of things that happened 36 years ago. These events happened decades ago. There's no way for anyone to really defend themselves against these charges just giving the passage of time. My team's reminding me, correct, she didn't sue the New York Times. Amy didn't. And that Jane Doe does claim in her lawsuit that she told her church group about her alleged sexual assault. She alleges as follows. During said church youth group meeting, which both Plaintiff Doe and defendant Amy Griffin attended with a number of other individuals, Plaintiff Jane Doe asked for Jesus's forgiveness due to the sexual assault by the teacher, which had occurred at the Sadie Hawkins dance. So I was right. Dave, that's the point. Jane Doe is alleging Amy Griffin knew since childhood that Jane Doe had been sexually assaulted by a teacher and knew the details of it and had the dress, which is something Amy tells as her own memory about herself in her book. So she may have gone back to Jane Doe. This is Jane Doe's version later in life after she wrote this book to get a couple of extra details or possibly even just to get that postcard. But Jane Doe's position will be it wasn't necessary for her to learn my story. But then she did send. So here's the other piece of it. I'm gonna let you respond, but I've been covering this so much. Jane Doe alleges that Amy then sent a movie, a private investigator posing as a movie producer to say, hey, I'm really interested in making your story. Now what? The guy didn't say I'm friends with Amy, but she's figured it. I mean, this woman made up this whole thing. This guy who she named, she just got a card with a name on it. And this person saying, I don't know this Jane Doe, I didn't do this. But the woman is alleging that Amy sent this PI who posed as a movie producer to get more details about Jane's story. And the movie producer is claiming that's not true or like the actual person named whatever his name is, says I didn't go out there. So it's hard to follow. But here's the other side of that, Dave. Amy admits in her own book that she did hire private investigators to run around investigating some of the details that she was offering. That's already been admitted. Okay, now there are a bunch of contradictions between Jane Doe's lawsuit, Amy Griffin's lawsuit. So to go back to the church group, which you mentioned, you're right. Jane Doe alleged that not only did she disclose the assault to the church group, but that Amy Griffin was part of the church group, that she was in attendance there. But Amy Griffin actually directly addressed that in her lawsuit. She says that they were never part of the same church youth group. So that's one of the factual disputes here. And as far as the movie producer, it's another thing where the movie producer himself says, I don't know what you're talking about. I had nothing to do. I wasn't involved in any way. And he says he has receipts to show that he wasn't there meeting with her at the time. So this is something that you could say should be proven. I mean, this is- But Jane, I think Jane is gonna say it was a PI posing as a movie producer. So Jane's not a sophisticated Hollywood person. So she's accepting this guy's name is whatever he tells her. No, that's right. But the question is, who is it, right? Because it's this whole movie producer talent agent. That's the issue. Apparently, it's just a he said, she said here. And this is not like the 1970s. We actually have phone data and all these other things that can show where you were at the time. So that's why I think we'll know. By the end of this, we'll know who's telling the truth and who's lying. You can email me to Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at MeganKelley.com, or just leave a comment below. But join the community by becoming a subscriber. We really, really value your input and your support. We may not always agree, but we are always gonna talk about it and respect. No BS, no agenda, no fear. For the first time since World War II, our national debt has exceeded the gross domestic product. America's reckless government spending keeps catching up with us. Higher inflation, higher prices, higher cost of living expenses, and higher interest payments on the national debt. 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